eling, aka #2: i heart traveling and rhinos

Wow, there is much blog catching-up to be done. I think it'll have to be done in several parts. Obviously, I'm back. And boy was it a whirlwind.

Let's see... I left March 27th and found myself in San Francisco, visiting ms. mnt. She was soooo nice and fed me (yum, Mel's diner) and stocked her fridge with carbs and let me play office in her apartment while she was doing important lawyer work. I was quite enamored with ms. mnt's place, so nice and sunny when it wasn't raining. Here's the view out the back:

Next, I hopped a plane to Hawaii. First stop, Honolulu. I stayed with ms. f, ever-fab Taiwan roommate, and her super-fun super-cute married friends j & k and their cutey son a. j's sister j-also came and got me at the airport, bearing an yummy edible candy lei, and then drove me around and fed me. Mmm, teriyaki crepes at Mocha Java... thanks, j-also! Unfortunately, it POURED for much of my stay in Honolulu. As in, the continuation of record rain for Oahu. Crazy. Flooding, etc. Yuck. However, it did stop raining long enough for me to get to the Honolulu Academy (one of the nicest museums I've been to in a while, by the way), where ms. f. works, and to go on the AMAZING tour of Shangri-La.

Shangri-La is one of those unbelieveable places that you just have to go and see to believe. Pictures don't do even do it justice (and you can't take photos inside, so go check the link above!) but here are a few:

And yes, that is Diamond Head in the background. That building is her "play house". Can you say WOW? I'm not sure that if I was the richest woman in the world, I would have built a house and filled it floor-to-ceiling with Islamic Art, but I'd probably get a house in Hawaii. As a side note, the rain was so bad that Diamond Head was inaccessible due to landslides while I was there. Not that I wanted to go hiking in the rain anyway.

I must've been pretty jet-lagged, 'cause I really just did not take many pictures while I was in Honolulu. I didn't even get a shot of me and ms. f!! I will have to make up for it by borrowing some shots from other sites so you don't get too bored. I have to mention, though I enjoyed the Life in the Pacific show and the Asian galleries (esp. ms. f's show, holla), I LOVED David Kuraoka's ceramics & bronzes. Link to the show. Organic and beautiful. A couple of shots, not taken by me:

Quick Honolulu food round up:

The Pavilion Cafe at the Academy. I had the Nicoise salad with seared ahi, yum. I would've gone for the mahi-mahi soba noodle salad, but ms. f got it and I thought after two years of ordering the same dish while we were abroad together it might be nice to branch out a bit.

Big City Diner. Um, kimchee fried rice, salad, and garlic fries. And holy crap, those garlic fries. As in awesome fries drizzled all over with garlic oil and chopped roasted garlic. Garlic fries... Here's a shot, courtesy of my new fave food blog, 'Ono Kine Grindz... I have a feeling I may be borrowing a couple more shots from this blog... and reading it compulsively...

Goma Tei Ramen Restaurant, at the Ward Centre. Gyoza and spicy cold noodles. Yum. And of course, the brilliant 'onokinegrindz has got me covered here too:
Kaka'ako Kitchen, the previously-mentioned Mocha Java Cafe, and the best meal of all, at the u house (parents of j and j-also, grandparents of a)... I'm so going back just to eat there again. With the rain and whatnot, we did a bit of shopping and a lot of hanging out. I haven't taken pictures of my shopping loot yet, but I'll get to that later. Mostly I was psyched to meet ms. f's surrogate hawai'i family, and to visit. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU again to everyone that put me up and fed me!

The last food stop I was "required" to make was to Leonard's- on the way to the airport, no less. Not real fancy-like, that Leonard's, but holy malasadas. I couldn't even take my own pictures, I was too hypnotized by the warm fried-dough-like pastries... one last thanks to 'onokinegrindz for these pictures, and a description and recipe too!:

I'm going to close out this entry with a shot of the gross gross brown water that we didn't go in once the rain finally stopped on my last day on Oahu. Ew, run-off. AND an adorable shot of k sleeping (sorry, k) while a and j play in the sand. a wouldn't walk on the sand but he looked awfully cute in his little surf shorts and he did get into scooping the sand up and dumping it over his shoulder (right onto sleeping daddy, of course)...